Day 11: Gerard Baden-Clay will testify in his trial for murder of wife Allison

'DID you kill Allison?' 'No I did not'. Gerard Baden-Clay is in the witness box giving evidence about his marriage, business and illicit affairs in his defence at his trial in which he is accused of killing his wife Allison.

Baden-Clay says he did not dispose of her body or clean up afterwards. He said in his mind he did not have a relationship with his mistress Toni McHugh and that he was planning to spend the rest of his life with Allison. He did however get the number of years they were married wrong.

He also said he had "never" been scratched by his wife and said the marks on his cheek on April 20, 2012 were from shaving.

When asked whether he killed his wife, Baden-Clay said: No I did not".

The 43-year-old told the jury about meeting his wife when they worked together at Flight Centre. They became friendly after he helped her with computer problems.

“I fell in love with her,” he said of his wife and began to cry in the witness box, dabbing his face with a hankerchief.

“I fell in love with her pretty well straight away and I had had a couple of girlfriends previously but I felt a level of emotional attachment to Allison that was far deeper than ever before and because of that I knew she was the one,” he said.

“I actually proposed to her underneath the Eiffel tower of Park Road. She was quite taken aback because I think she had been engaged before and probably psychologically she was preparing herself for some months hence.

"(She) was completely taken by surprise so she actually asked for a week to think about it.”

Baden-Clay has told the court that he first noticed signs of Allison's anxiety on a trip to South America.

He said drugs they took to stop them getting malaria had a dramatic effect on his wife and she became quite withdrawn.

"Allison could not get out of bed… and she was just couldn’t get out of bed, just completely, not unresponsive, it wasn’t as though she was comatose, but she was curled up in bed and didn’t want to go anywhere," he said.

“I said we should call the doctor and she said `no, she didn’t feel sick… I just don’t want to go out today’.”

Baden-Clay said he’d never seen his wife like that before.

“The next day she woke up normal more or less, as though nothing happened and I was delighted but also confused as to why that was,” he said.

“That sort of mood fluctuation continued throughout the trip.”

They eventually returned to a Scout camp in Switzerland where they worked in voluntary roles as part of a nine-month contract.

Baden-Clay said his wife appeared to get better but there was unprecedented snow fall in the Alps and the slopes in the valley where they lived was prone to avalanches, resulting in evacuations throughout their village.

“Allison did not respond well to that whole situation at all,” he said.

“There were times when she thought in her paranoia that the sky was falling in, so when it became a physical possibility that would happen… she was very, very, anxious.

“I covered her by saying she was not well, had a cold or a headache or that sort of thing but it was because of that.”